Posts by Mark York 3

Sysadmin crashed computer recording data from active space probe

Lord Sugar - The Revenge Of The Disc - A Long Long Time Ago In A Job Far Away

I heard the amusing story at a Trade Show about a hour after someone had just walked up to the Amstrad stand.

Can I help you?

Is this IBM compatible?

Ohh yes!

Can it run any IBM software?

Anything that will run on a IBM will run on this.

Ohhhh nice

Sales guy walks away finding new people to gush over & extol the virtues of the PC1512.

Slidely disk in...>tappity< >JANGLE<

Sales reps flock back to the new PC1512 showing acute distress...

What did you do?

It appears your machine can't run everything that runs on a IBM after all. The miscreant stated as he removed his copy of the IBM diagnostic testing disc.

Thar she blows: Strava heat map shows folk on shipwreck packed with 1,500 tonnes of bombs

Judge Dredge (Sorry)

The fire & security team at one place I worked at kept everything on a Desktop PC rather on the network.

While replacing (& nosing around - Because well bored fire-fighters at night ;) ) the machine & urging (Unsuccessfully) them to get a network share so this information wouldn't get lost.

I read a report detailing how sand (Dredged up from a sandbank) was being shipped in on the back of lorries as part of building works at the plant & as one was being tipped, somebody who was actively paying attention spotted the tail fins of a UXB.

Aut-doh!-pilot: Driver jams 65mph Tesla Model S under fire truck, walks away from crash

Re: Pass out at twice the legal limit ?

Probably a 16oz pint at that - Lightweights.

Re: Wonder what the excuse will be this time?

Seems they have some MAJOR problems with their buyers.

As DNA almost wrote

“Not only am I rich enough to afford this ship\car, I am also rich enough not to take it seriously.”

Re: The Nasty Little Truth About Deep Learning

Or indeed your Smart car.

Re: anti-collision

Possibly NSFW - Jim Davison Crucial bit starts at 3.00.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6XoPn7dKvY

Boot Note - Mr Drake is apparently THO's (Great?) Uncle.

'The capacitors exploded, showering the lab in flaming confetti'

Re: I'm truly surprised

I was going to & still am going with

Alvin & The ChipSmokes!

In Soviet California, pedestrian hits you! Bloke throws himself in front of self-driving car

Pedestrians - The Right Of Way

Pedestrians in Canada do have the right of way & look somewhat amazed if they get hit for stepping out without looking (& a 99% of them don't, you can tell who the Brits are as they actually look from left to right or vice versa as they cross).

Also get fined for not using a crosswalk\jaywalking, even with nothing coming even I have found myself (after 9 years) semi conditioned to wait for the "walk" sign even when it's -25C outside (Hence the icon).

User had no webcam or mic, complained vid conference didn’t work

Re: A non work tangent

Royal Marine jammed a LS120 drive in his laptop somehow (not sure if it was a LS120 disc, 3.5 FDD or both) & then proceeded to try & extract it with a knife.

Re: AC as about a company I used to work for...

Had that on a software upgrade project, at least two sets of backups & screenshots of mapped drives & printers, then printed out for good measure for a financial client.

One chap had the continual misfortune to encounter every problem machine at every location, until he was finally ejected by the client rep for yet another feck up situation.

To be fair the client rep had had the guys card marked since day one of the project as he was caught using his mobile phone for the screen shots & asked the client rep how he could print them off, instead of [ALT][Prt Sc] & pasting into Word for printing.

Re: @ ChrisCabbage

Clansman - That takes me back to my days at Racal (Seaton).

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

It's Nice To Be A Miracle Worker.

I was walking across a car park & I was asked by a Harley Davison rider if I had jump cables in my vehicle (No kick starter & battery flat), while I was digging them out I heard his lady say:

"Why did you ask him that for?"

"He looked like the sort of guy that would carry that sort of thing just in case".

Ice cliffs found on Mars and NASA says they’re a tap for astronauts

The Waters of Mars

Worked so well for Bowie Base.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1413314/

Note I always thought the infected humans skin texture, resembled a less green version without the carapaces & helmets of the first post. Suggesting the ice warriors might have been very different in their past.

UK.gov puts Suffolk 7-year-old's submarine design into production

You missed out Thunderbird 4.

If Australian animals don't poison you or eat you, they'll BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE

Re: Fascinating

Many races believe that the creation of the Universe involved some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being known as the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The Jatravartids live in perpetual fear of the time they call "the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief", somewhat similar to the Apocalypse. However, the Great Green Arkleseizure theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI.

'I knew the company was doomed after managers brawled in a biker bar'

Re: Coffee Darts FTW!

Minor league confession here, I worked with a Mr Bean lookalike, soundalike & presumably smell-alike as he had little sense in regards to personal hygiene (Proudly mumbling that he was staying in a B&B as his car was off road (A rusted out Ford Escort with a mound of seagull shit on the roof so high, that it looked like a flock of Albatrosses had crapped on it),

I used to set up rubber bands on my equipment test jig, so placed to fly across his fingers as a series of adjustments were needed from the board under test he was working on & then remove myself from the equation by getting a component swapped out, leaving him to work out (unsuccessfully) who was flicking rubber bands at him.

Re: RE Gearbox

I used to work for a car dealership, twice a week I would be sent down to Kingsbridge from Exeter & I always used to come back from the top of the Haldon Hills via a country road into Shillingford rather than the main A38.

Halfway down the hill was a lovely hump that I merrily launched into space in a BL Ital van twice weekly, then one day I forgot about the unsecured lump of dead engine in the back, which smashed into the rear of the drivers seat.

No long lasting damage to me fortunately or the van.

Oregon will let engineer refer to himself as an 'engineer'

Re: let me guess

In Canadaland foe some advertised jobs you apparently need a degree in computer science to unpack & put a PC on a desk & offer deskside support.

However I'm not sure where I'm left with my HNC in Electronic Engineering these days.

YouTuber cements head inside microwave oven

FTFY

Then at least there would be a charge of him no longer contributing to the DNA pool.

Freelance techies moan about DXC billing snafu: No pay for three weeks

Worked with a guy, who had a very bad habit of submitting 6 weeks of invoices at a time, so he received a bumper bank deposit.

When he submitted one batch & didn't receive a response on his expected payday 2 weeks later, he discovered that the contracting company had folded 1 week after his last received payment.

Brit cyber-spies: Fancy meeting outside court to talk about evidence?

Re: I'll volunteer

Which might make you one of those facts that need to be disappeared, along with your now non-existent bar tab.

What will drive our cars when the combustion engine dies?

My wife doesn't have a tin foil hat.

Inductive Charging On Motorways

An inductive power transfer system that is analogous to an air - core transformer to power\charge vehicles on newer roads.

Use the batteries, when you exit the motorway, dual carriageway or during your local commute.

https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/electric-roads-charge-your-car-you-drive_en.html

Re: Using fuel

For other uses, like trains, it will be more rational to use electricity. Mind you, it is more energy efficient (and cheaper) to use a diesel locomotive than an electric one, but the diesel one is dirtier.

The diesel engine on a locomotive is used as the power source for the alternator that produces the electrical energy to drive the locomotive.

That's my train spotters anorak, being put back in it's cupboard.

Russian rocket snafu may have just violently dismantled 19 satellites

I read it as potatoes initially.

Lock them up and throw away the (don)key

Re: Okay, let's get it over with......

Donkey Chokey.

Boss made dirt list of minions' mistakes, kept his own rampage off it

Re: Not IT-related

I did a HNC in electronics along with others who wanted to upgrade our C&G\ONC qualifications.

A friend of mine was a ex-TV repair guy & told the story about setting up the pots on a replacement board with his hand adjacent to the HT & how his watch strap delivered the full experience to his person when it made contact.

The amount of skin he tore off his bare arm from the solder joints as he extracted his arm hurriedly was quite impressive as he stood there shaking & dripping blood on the customers carpet.

An ex-employer decided it was a good idea to mess around with three phase (he wasn't a electrician, but a salesman), the scars formation around his eyes would tell you how lucky he was to be wearing glasses at that moment.

About 6 months ago I posted this here, so I'll C&P it.....

At one facility I worked at & I don't have the full story of why the offshore support insisted on the former plant Sysadmin hitting the plants BRB, pictures were sent to the remote guy via email, he confirmed that was the button he wanted to be pushed & goodness gracious me it was going to be pushed. He was advised again of what it was that would be pushed & the consequences, the plant manager dutifully informed of what was required, what the offshore wanted & what would be the fallout.

& so it came to pass that the BRB was pushed on the word of the Technically Competent Support representative.

(Paraphrasing here........)

"Goodness gracious me, Why your plant disappearing from network?"

"Because the BRB you insisted that was the button you wanted pushing, despite my telling you that it was never to be pushed under pain of death has just shut down the entire plant."

I think it took until about 15 minutes before production was due to commence the following day to get everything back up & running.

Re: We turned it on its head

Told the story of the small business owner that flipped the voltage selector switch to see what would happen many a time now (See icon again).

The bill for reinstalling & recovering his business accounts & data from a very very shell shocked hard drive & file allocation table was in the order of 10 times the bill & labour for replacing the PSU.

Re: We turned it on its head

I hasten to add (Some 12 hours later admittedly) the training course was unrelated to electronics & setting voltage switches correctly, but the operation & setup of Syledis off shore position systems.

There was a lot of wine & beer involved that first lunchtime with upper management of Sercel (We had to take the tram back to town & again to return to site the next day).

Re: We turned it on its head

Spent a entire morning rebuilding a PSU (not a PC one) for use on ships & on-shore positioning systems.

Went for Friday Lunchtime liquid lunch with my colleagues, returned & powered it on with a bang, yes I had forgotten to switch it from 110V back to 240V for testing (See icon choice).

On the plus side later that day I was told I was going to Nantes for two weeks on a training course, departing Sunday, so fixing it again wasn't my problem. :D

Windows Update borks elderly printers in typical Patch Tuesday style

Re: dot matrix

"such use cases are: transaction / financial logs, emergency services call detail records, EV/DV certificate issuance by a certification authority or any other case where you need to have some sort of minimal auditable paper trail in case that the electronics go tits up."

Or indeed minute by minute readings in a (Pharma) lab.

Q: Why are you running in the office? A: This is my password for El Reg

Re: NaN - Information

You won't get it.

World Vasectomy Day: 15k men line up for live vent-blocking

Re: Dear Register

& indeed whoever placed the story for Splunk directly underneath, my mind read a different word & was immedietly taken back 13 years to the Dansani saga.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/19/cokes_spunky_water_pulled/

Icon = "Feeble humans unable to drink water & forced to develop brewing instead - Beer is better".

The Quantum of Firefox: Why is this one unlike any other Firefox?

Re: 30 per cent faster

Surfing on my crappy work laptop today, I didn't get any of the usual lockups & even faecesbook was able to be browsed without it becoming unresponsive after 4 minutes.

"So its a win from me"

"& its a win for him."

Icon for The Two Ronnies.

The day I almost pinned my tushie as a Google Maps landmark

Re: I knew it! 'FB' means....

I prefer Faeces Book.

AMD, Intel hate Nvidia so much they're building a laptop chip to spite it

Re: Wha??

'Did I do anything wrong today or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?'

I think its taken a turn for the worse, but that's probably just me getting old.

As do I....I am known as "The OnComing Scorn"

Black Horse Down: Lloyds Banking Group goes TITSUP*

Re: "outsource management of its data centres to Big Blue"

@Keith.

It also worked for Gordon Brittas (Stated somewhere with in episode 1 along with their older son(s) who disappeared never to be heard of again).

39 episodes of 'CSI' used to build AI's natural language model

POI

Just as well they didn't start showing it Person Of Interest - Especially with regards to Samaritan.

'The Queen' is showing Geneva how to be polite on public transport

Paddington Station

About ten years ago there used to be a female station announcer with a voice that dripped honey with a soft US accent.

Only heard her announcements twice, she was very apologetic in tone for late arrivals, but went on in some detail for the benefit of passengers trying to board the train that had arrived that they might get further if they tried letting passengers off the train first.

Icon because I can't find my ticket.

Boffins trapped antiprotons for days, still can't say why they survived the Big Bang

Re: anti-particles "moving backwards in time" ?

Sounds rather like "A Matter of Balance" from Space:1999 second series.

Unfortunately written by Pip & Jane Baker best\later known for crimes against script writing for Doctor Who.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0706310/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl

Your data will get hacked anyway so you might as well give up protecting it

Re: Never explained

I remember the cover of that book.

The Google Home Mini: Great, right up until you want to smash it in fury

Re: Silly Valley

You really didn't miss much - Aftermath suffered from a very bad rehash of previous seasons ship footage into the clunkiest battle sequence unimaginable. It made the unmanned ore carrier & Nova Queen collision from Star One look good (& it got rehashed (with one of them switching sides) into the battle in the futile hope that the viewers wouldn't notice).

Fortunately all that crap ended once Liberator emerged damaged from the battle (with the nice fly past of two federation pursuit ships). I'd go so far as to remove the opening minutes if I'd been the director\editor.

Re: Silly Valley

I always got the impression he was up to stuff in the background without the key (which presumably activated his Audio I/O).

Zen's main function was to protect the ship, rejecting commands that potentially endangered it, apart from the occasional "Wisdom must be gathered, it cannot be given" type of observation.

ORAC I am closing down. I have much to do. You have engaged my circuits on your petty affairs for far too long.

Star Wars: Big Euro cinema group can't handle demand for tickets to new flick

Re: it's up, but doesn't work

With Mr Lucas doing the writing, they probably won't want to hear the dialogue.

Exhibit One M'Lud "I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me."

Ford famously told George Lucas, concerning the clunky dialogue in "Star Wars," "George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it."

Harrison Ford later confirmed this: "I told George: 'You can't say that stuff. You can only type it.'"

Mark Hamill, for one, was amazed at the dedication Ford put into each and every line, stating, "He'd written things in the margins, saying the same thing basically, but his way. He had an amazing way of keeping the meaning but doing it in a really unique way for his character."

Ex-Harrods IT man cleared of stealing company issued laptop

Re: Eh?

The thing I don't get is, as you can log onto any machine using cached credentials if you are not on the domain\connected to the network (& can recall the PW used last time) & this machine was at his home, therefore presumably OFF the corporate network why was he not able to log into it as a IT Tech Guy (or did he just believe his access to it was revoked & didn't bother trying).

& why no copy of Hirens or DBAN to solve either of his two issues as a IT worker?

What is the probability of being drunk at work and also being tested? Let's find out! Correctly

Advanced testing

I was informed by a colleague in Canada, that the company had sensors down at one highly state of the art US site, that was able to detect what you had imbibed\inhaled & to what extent in the past 48 hours before you even swiped into the plants turnstiles.

"The 'drink because my wife and kids have left me because I moved the family from <somewhere nice> to Bracknell'"

Bracknell = RACAL perchance.

"rolled in at 3pm, fell asleep, then stood up and peed in his top desk drawer." = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNFz0hkPXvA

There was a similar sort of Christmas party at RACAL Seaton (Before I joined), there was sex under benches & all sorts of celebrations on return from the pub\in house supplied booze, following year Management wizened up & no such celebrations took place, they just kicked us out at lunchtime & we went straight to The George instead.

Musk: Come ride my Big F**king Rocket to Mars

Re: Moonbase Alpha

ITC cancelled the second season plans.

Unwilling to let the UFO 2 pre-production work go to waste, Anderson offered ITC a new series idea, unrelated to UFO, in which the Moon would be blown out of Earth orbit taking the Moonbase survivors with it.

Icon obviously because September 13th.